coney island

The Artist Studio Affordability Project known as ASAP needs a mere $600 to make the organization official. Main initiatives include building a coalition between artists and people with similar issues. It’s the single most important step to getting artists’ issues recognized. DONATE. [ioby]

Finally, you can order an asshole! Assholes on Demand offers a service for assholes to help you confront daily offenders like, say, your cable company. We expect they’ll need lots of volunteers. [Assholes on Demand]

A brief history of the artist from solitary genius, to artisan to creative entrepreneur. Puke. [The Atlantic]

A stepping stone to electric cars? A doofy looking but very high-tech electric scooter comes with rechargeable battery stations and an app that can change its color. [Tech Crunch]

Based on psychological studies, the people who general enjoy horror movies are unempathetic thrill-seeking men attracted to cowering women. Cops? [The New Republic]

A bizarre piece on the detriments of under-sharing on Facebook. This article begins with the idea that it’s bad that people don’t share their marital fights and that this imbalanced perception inspires other ill-suited couples to tie the knot. Then we learn that people hold back too much on issues that matter—Ferguson for example—and that’s the real problem, not the lack of personal tiffs on Facebook. Way to build an argument. [The New Republic]

Not a bad idea: Mark Zuckerberg started a book club on Facebook with discussion in the comment threads. Go figure, though, that he has selected “The End of Power”, about people in power. From the description: “Those in power today are more constrained in what they can do with it and more at risk of losing it than ever before.” This from somebody whose business model is based on aggregating our personal information. Can’t wait for the comments to roll in. [Facebook]

A humorous quote from the Chief Executive at SpaceX, a company hoping to build a commercial rocket ship. “We’ve been able to soft-land the rocket booster in horror movies the ocean twice so far,” Elon Musk said. “Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded. It’s quite difficult to reuse at that point.” [The New York Times]

I can now add another reason never to swim at Coney Island, in addition to the open fucking and public shitting which I’ve personally witnessed on previous trips: a bloated human hand has been found floating in its waters. Police are investigating. [Animal New York]

Everything about these tech world predictions is spot on. Brilliantly snarky too. On the predicted success of Uber, “Nobody will care about all the bad behavior anymore because money talks and bullshit walks, as Goethe once wrote.” [Valleywag]

Collector and dealer Stefan Simchowitz spent his vacation on facebook talking about his New York Times profile. Read the threads on Paddy Johnson’s facebook page and elsewhere. [Facebook]

More on Carnegie Mellon University’s dismissal of curator Astria Suparak. The CMU student paper The Tartan, has come out with their report, and they found one art history professor who admits that Suparak was too focused on “social critique” and a student who thinks she had a good “work ethic.” [The Tartan]

U.K. copyright law will change April 6th. A new exception will allow artists to use copyrighted material for the purpose of parody. [The Art Newspaper]

The 67th wealthiest billionaire in the world is suing Larry Gagosian and Gagosian Gallery for fraud. That billionaire, Ronald Perelman, is claiming fraud over a Jeff Koons “Popeye” sculpture he purchased for $4 million. He’s an unhappy customer to say the least; the plaintiffs allege that Gagosian manipulates prices for the artists he represents. “The court has affirmed that we have a valid fraud claim against Mr. Gagosian based on his unfair dominance of the art market,” Christine Taylor, a spokeswoman for Perelman, said in an e-mail. [Bloomberg Businessweek]

It’s official: Our nation’s capital will get a new museum, the Institute for Contemporary Expression. Let’s hope someone decides to brainstorm a few more names before the museum actually opens. [Washington City Paper]

A Qing Dynasty temple in ruins has been transformed into a luxury hotel filled with art. This includes eight luxury rooms, a gallery, a restaurant, a courtyard with sculptures, and a James Turrell Skyspace. Rich people, you have a new destination. [The Wall Street Journal]

Sharks are coming to Brooklyn! Over 45 different types of them, in fact. They’re part of a $157 million aquarium exhibition in Coney Island set to debut in 2016. [Gowanus Lounge]

Oh man, we’ve been waiting to post these GIFs all week. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Some background: In honor of the holiday, we asked Japanese-born artist Yoshi Sodeoka to make us a set of American themed gifs. In response, he created this INCREDIBLE set of GIFs devoted to our favorite holiday sport: competitive hot dog eating. You’re looking at the winners of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, (which takes place every fourth of July on Coney Island), madly gobbling hot dogs. Flags from the winners’ countries of origin stream out of their ears and across a sky of hyper-colored fireworks. We love these gifs because they are America at her best—loud, exuberant, and entirely too much.

If you flipped through the GO website at all, chances are you stopped at Takeshi Yamada’s page. So many great things here: the all-business headshot; the Coney Island hometown; the Renaissance-style murals of mythical creatures; the taxidermied sea rabbit; and the conjoined twin Mona Lisa with an added Takeshi Yamada head.

We found out that Takeshi is an acclaimed taxidermist (part of the society of Minnesota Rogue Taxidermists with Nate Hill), he’s taught at the Museum of Natural History, his work has been exhibited worldwide, and he boasts a highly impressive honors and awards list. He’s been awarded the keys to both New Orleans and Gary, Indiana. He’s a fan of old tuxedos as casual wear. Obviously, we needed to talk to this guy.